Divinity: Original Sin II - Metacritic score 94

[Gustaran]

Is anyone playing this game at the moment? With a Metacritic score of 94, reviewers are rating this game amazingly high.
Current opinion seems to be that this is one of the best RPGs of all time, so I would be interested to hear some input from forum members in case anyone is playing this right now.

IGN review 9.6:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/09/21/d...n-2-review

[Sullla]

The limited amount that I have played thus far is very good. The biggest issue with the original game was poor balancing between the different skills, and they've done a much better job of fixing that in this version, along with adding a really cool physical armor / magical armor system (each blocks certain status ailments until peeled away) and a mechanic whereby the hireable companions can be customized with any build desired. You get to pick them based on their story elements, not based on their classes.

I'm holding off on playing any further at the moment out of a desire to do the first playthrough in coop mode, and we need a new desktop computer here to make that happen. As soon as it arrives, I'll be playing this game nonstop. It looks like a really, really good game for variant play. RBers should definitely check this one out.

[Bobchillingworth]

I backed it on Kickstarter and have been enjoying it for the past couple weeks. It's an outstanding RPG, but on "Tactician" difficulty at least the game does require you to reload constantly; time and again the game will throw brutal curveballs at you which you couldn't have possibly initially anticipated, both in boss fights and just exploring the world.

Early example: there's a black cat which starts following your characters around if you have the perk which allows you to speak with animals (which thankfully most of the AI companions come with). A potential party member will want to speak with a certain guard later on- while you're locked in conversations the game world around you keeps going, and a second nearby guard will casually murder the cat, claiming it's bad luck. If you manage to avoid this, and there's no way you could possibly know it's going to happen at the time, as well as several opportunities for the cat to die to random enemies, environmental hazards, etc., then many hours later the cat will grant you the best utility summon spell in the game, which to the best of my knowledge there's no other way to obtain.

There's countless examples of the game throwing crap at you like that- it seems like every other boss fight ends up escalating midway through, as several characters are afflicted with severe cases of Final Fantasy "True Form" Syndrome.

[Gustaran]

Early example:  there's a black cat which starts following your characters around if you have the perk which allows you to speak with animals (which thankfully most of the AI companions come with).  A potential party member will want to speak with a certain guard later on- while you're locked in conversations the game world around you keeps going, and a second nearby guard will casually murder the cat, claiming it's bad luck.  If you manage to avoid this, and there's no way you could possibly know it's going to happen at the time, as well as several opportunities for the cat to die to random enemies, environmental hazards, etc., then many hours later the cat will grant you the best utility summon spell in the game, which to the best of my knowledge there's no other way to obtain.  

Forget about the summon spell, is it possible to avenge my poor cat and attack the guard who murdered it?  

But I get what you mean, many reviewers pointed out that it is quite easy to miss out on parts of the game if you make certain choices. On the other hand, it does increase the replay value...

[Bobchillingworth]

Forget about the summon spell, is it possible to avenge my poor cat and attack the guard who murdered it?  

Of course! I ended up killing him premptively for totally unrelated reasons. You can also ignore the area he's stationed in entirely, or teleport the cat to safety, or distract the gaurd by having a different party member talk to him, or probably a dozen other solutions. It's just that you don't know in advance that you should do any of the preceeding.

It's kind of like playing XCOM 2 for the first time, where you're inevitably going to be screwed when you encounter any of the half-dozen enemies with obnoxious special powers you aren't prepared for, except this shit happens constantly.

[SadGit]

In the first game you could hit another chars portrait and act while the conversation was taking place. In a co-op the cat thing wouldnt be an issue anyways. Larian has allways been bastids in the way of loosing out on things (potentially big things) in a blink, but equaly cool in filling the game with loads of big things, so that you seldom ruin a game. But they make horrible games for completionists.

[Lewwyn]

I played the first one and loved it, just haven't gotten around to playing this one yet. I'm glad there are good reviews though. I'll bump it up the list of things to play.

[Commodore]

How is co-op on this/Divinity OS1? This is something my wife and I would love to play together, I think.

[SadGit]

How is co-op on this/Divinity OS1? This is something my wife and I would love to play together, I think.

Very strong I would say. Played the first with my old roommate, having a blast. There are a few niggles in OS1 where your partner is in a conversation with NPC and you suddenly get a promt to do an alignment change, which will block you screen (a lot of back and forth between the 2 player chars, where they can agree or not on saving Timmy from the well ->+1 compasion ->getting a boost to a skill). A bother when you are trading or moving. Beyond that it worked smooth, trading between the 2 players (and 2 hirelings) is right-click, few situations where both players have to be in the same screen. If one player goes into combat the other will only join by moving within a set range of the combat, otherwise move and act as normal. If I had 3(1) friends with rig that could handle OS2 I would be playing it now.

[Commodore]

So how much of a hassle is it to set up? Is there anything like LAN-with-spawn-copies or if we want to play this two-player do we have to with two copies?